As many 23 Congress corporators of the Itanagar Municipal Council joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday evening, reported PTI. They switched over to the saffron outfit in the presence of Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu (pictured above) and BJP state president Tapir Gao.
Gao welcomed the new members, saying they will work as a team for the “welfare and development of the entire state”. The chief minister said that the BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the only party with a difference. “The twin cities of Itanagar and Naharlagun are the faces of Arunachal Pradesh,” he said, promising the council all the required help to revive the capital complex.
The Itanagar civic body has 30 councillors, of which 26 belonged to the Congress. But this number had dropped to 25 after it expelled one of them from the party earlier.
The latest blow to the Congress in the North East comes 10 days after Manipur saw a similar defection. As many as 15 Congress members, including Singngat MLA Ginsuanhau Zou, had joined the BJP in the presence of Chief Minister N Biren Singh on April 17.
Zou was the second Congress MLA to join the BJP since the party came to power in Manipur with a coalition government. Party legislator Shyam Kumar had defected to the BJP ahead of the Assembly floor test and was given a berth in the chief minister’s Cabinet.
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